Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (75 page)

“Why?”

“Because we need some answers.”

“No, no, this is an ‘ignorance is bliss’ deal. Let’s leave this alone.”

“I’m not comfortable with not knowing what’s going on when things are this severely screwed up. We left behind a bunch of dead dogs and a dead gas station guy--that’ll be on the news. We need a full understanding of what we’re dealing with.”

“We shouldn’t have brought the girl.”

“Yeah, I know. We weren’t thinking right.”

“I never said to bring her in the first place.”

“Okay, fine,
I
wasn’t thinking right. The dog teeth in my skin messed with my thought process. Are you happy?”

“Just saying.”

“They’re going to
kiiiiiiiiiilllllllll
you,” Ivan sang out from the back.

“We should call Ricky, at least,” said Lou. “Let him know what happened.”

George sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. Damn it.”

He took out his cell phone and pulled up Ricky The Prick from his “recent contacts” list. Ricky answered on the first ring. “Hiya, sweetie. How’s the werewolf doing?”

“He’s fine. But we had a pretty big problem.”

“Fleas? Hairballs?”

“Ricky, don’t make me--”

“All right, all right. Jeez, you sound tense. What’s the problem?”

“We stopped to get gas, and about a dozen dogs attacked us. Like they’d gone crazy. One of them bashed itself half to death against the van.”

“You for real?”

“Yeah. Lou had to shoot two of them. The guy who worked there, they ripped his goddamn neck open.”

“No kidding? He died?”

“Unless you can live with most of your throat gone.”

“Wow. I’ve never seen somebody get mauled to death by dogs before. I mean, I’ve seen videos, but never in real life. You guys all right?”

“I’m kind of bit up, but I’ll be okay.”

“You should put some antiseptic on the bites.”

“Thanks. I’ll do that. Any idea why a bunch of dogs would suddenly attack us like that?”

“Who do you think you’re calling, National Geographic? How would I know?”

“We think the werewolf was responsible.”

“Uh, by ‘werewolf’ you mean the guy that nutcase Bateman
thinks
is a werewolf, right?”

“Yeah, him.”

“This is a joke, isn’t it? You’re trying to get back at me for giving you the crappy werewolf assignment. Y’know, there are a lot of worse places you can be. A guy at a sewage treatment plant isn’t paying his protection money. Can you believe that? A sewage treatment plant. How do you get protection money out of them in the first place? The world is crazy. You could be on your way to the turd processing factory right now, so don’t--”

“Are you done?”

“I don’t think I was supposed to say anything about the sewage place. Don’t tell anybody, okay?”

“Enough, Ricky! We need to know if we should keep going where we’re going, or if we should get off the road for a while until things blow over.”

“Oh, you should definitely keep going. They want the werewolf this evening at the latest. Where did you say the dogs were?”

“It’s a small town called Hachiholata or something like that.”

“Can you spell it for me?”

“H-A-C...” George trailed off. “No, I can’t spell it for you! Just find it!”

“All right, all right, I’ll follow what’s going on there. Worst case, we’ll try to get you a new van that nobody will be looking for, though I’m not sure we have any people in that area who can make that happen. For now, just assume that everything’s cool. I’ll call you back.”

“Are you going to contact Bateman?”

“Oh, hell no. Just keep going. I’ll take care of everything.”

“Thanks,” said George. He hung up and tucked the cell phone back into his pocket.

“I noticed that you didn’t mention your new hostage,” said Ivan.

George ignored him. “Still take the next exit,” he told Lou.

“Why?”

“Because this wolf is going to talk.”

CHAPTER SIX

An Unwise Decision

“That seems like it could turn out bad,” said Lou.

“We’re not going to let him out of the cage,” George insisted. “We’re not even going to get close to it. I’m just going to make him talk.”

“Why does he need to talk? Why do we need to know anything? I’m perfectly happy not having a clue in the world about what’s going on.”

“Well, I need some answers. We were not sufficiently briefed before we took this job. There’s a big frickin’ difference between transporting an annoying guy in a cage and transporting a guy who can command dogs to do his bidding...or, you know, his scent makes them crazy and violent, or whatever it is that he did. If he can mess with animals like that, who knows what else he can do? Maybe he’s...I don’t know, an abomination or something, and we should destroy him for the good of mankind.”

“I liked it better when we didn’t care if he was a werewolf or not.”

Truth be told, so did George. He usually didn’t want to know the details. He’d committed plenty of immoral acts without understanding the true motive behind them.

But this was different. A lot different. This wasn’t about stolen cash or sleeping with the wrong person’s wife or making a poor business decision that needed to be rectified with knives. This was an unexplained phenomenon. Or, if it
had
been explained, then Ivan really was a werewolf, which was completely absurd but a matter that needed to be further investigated.

Sure, George had absolutely no intention of doing anything to put the job or his personal safety at risk, but Ivan didn’t need to know that.

“Are you having trouble adjusting to your new view of the world?” Ivan asked. “It’s always a little devastating when decades of preconceived notions about the way things really work are shattered all at once. But just wait until you meet the aliens.”

“Let me explain something to you,” said George. “Do you understand the concept of ‘everybody fucks up once in a while’?”

“Yeah, I think I do.”

“Good. This is how it relates to current events. When Lou and I do a job, we’re expected to complete it successfully. That’s what we get paid for. But no matter how good you are--and we’re good, believe me--there’s going to be the occasional job that goes bad. Somebody’s not where they’re supposed to be, somebody who’s not supposed to be there shows up, your car breaks down...there are lots of reasons why a job might not work out properly. The people in charge understand this.”

“Yeah, right. If you don’t deliver me to Tampa, you’ll be at the bottom of a lake by midnight.”

“Oh, we’re going to deliver you, don’t get me wrong. But if we deliver you with your arms and legs broken, we’ll get yelled at, and possibly forfeit our fee, but nobody’s going to kill us. Now, I don’t want to get yelled at, and I certainly want to get paid for all the crap I’ve gone through today, but I’ve reached a level of frustration where busting you up might be worth it.”

“Cool. I’m glad I could bring you to that level.”

“George, are you sure you wanna do this?” Lou asked. There was a knowing look in his eyes. He was playing along.

George nodded. “Oh yeah.”

“All right. Promise me you won’t do any permanent damage.”

“Do you see what they’re doing?” Ivan asked Michele. “They’re going to break my legs. I wonder how they’re going to do it? Tire iron to the kneecaps, I guess. That’s what I would do if I were them, to make sure it hurts enough.”

“You don’t really believe that he’s a werewolf, do you?” Michele asked George.

“I might.”

“But that’s crazy.”

George pointed to her shoulder. “How do you explain that?”

“A pack of feral dogs. A chemical in the air. A ridiculously elaborate assassination attempt on you. There’s a huge number of things I’d need to cross off my list before I got to ‘werewolf.’“

“Well, hopefully he’ll help us cross them off.”

“You know, George,” said Lou, “we really should get rid of the girl. The longer we keep her around, the more she’s gonna see, and the worse things are gonna get.”

“So you think we should just drop her off somewhere?”

“Maybe.”

“What if she talks?”

“What’s driving around with her gonna do to change that? Are we so charming that an hour in the van with us is gonna keep her from going to the cops?”

George sighed. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t want you to let me go,” said Michele.

“What?”

“I’m staying with you. I want in.”

“
What?
”

“I want ten percent of what you’re getting.”

“You don’t even know what we’re getting,” said George.

“Did you see the shitty car I was driving? I’ll be happy with ten percent of anything. Look, I already know what’s going on with you guys, so you might as well keep me around and pay me off.”

George and Lou exchanged a look of disbelief. “And why wouldn’t we just kill you?” George asked.

“If you wanted me dead, you could’ve just left me back at the gas station. Instead, you brought me with you, knowing full well that we were leaving behind my car, which has my purse in it, which means that people will know that I’m missing, which means that they’ll look for other clues, which means that they’ll find some blood on the pavement, which means that they’ve got DNA evidence on you. It’ll take a while, because there’s so much blood to sort through, but why would a couple of smart men like you want to link yourselves to a murder when you could just keep a cooperative girl around for a tiny payoff?”

George grimaced. He tried to think of a bigger blunder they’d ever made in their careers in crime than letting Michele into the van. None immediately came to mind. Still, bad guys or not, they couldn’t have just watched her get ripped apart by dogs while she was trying to save the attendant from getting ripped apart by dogs. Obviously, they should’ve expelled her from the vehicle as soon as they’d driven away from the gas station, but Ivan had opened his big mouth right away, and George wasn’t thinking straight, and he had a hot chick on his lap, so how could he be expected to make an intelligent decision?

That said, they were supposed to be professionals. He gave Lou a sheepish look. “When did we become such retards?”

“Don’t say retards. That’s offensive to developmentally disabled people. We’re just the regular kind of stupid.”

“Fair enough. What do you think?”

Lou shrugged. “Better than disposing of a body.”

“All right,” George told Michele. “You’ve got yourself a deal. Ten percent.”

“Ten percent of your combined take, not just ten percent of what one of you is getting.”

“Of course.”

Michele extended her hand. George shook it. He had to admit, he now liked her on a much deeper level than just her physical attractiveness.

“You guys are going for that?” Ivan asked. “Seriously? Well, shit, if I knew it was that easy to negotiate, we could’ve saved ourselves a couple of hours. Let me go and I’ll make it worth your while. How much do you want?”

“One hundred bazillion dollars,” said Lou.

Ivan sneered. “How about twenty bucks and a gently used porno mag, you fuckin’ Neanderthal?”

“Watch the potty mouth,” said George. “My partner doesn’t appreciate foul language around women.”

“Yeah, well, your partner can go fuck a duck-fucked pony from Fucksville.”

“I don’t even know what that means, but I’m going to quote it every chance I get.”

“Fuck you.”

“What’s the matter, werewolf? You don’t sound quite as arrogant as you were before.”

“Well, I’m either terrified, or I’m faking it because I have some sinister plan ready to go into effect. You’d better hope it’s the first one, because I’m really in the mood to exsanguinate a couple of minor-league thugs and their new hooker.”

“Is that another word that I’m not supposed to know what it means?”

“What word? Hooker? Surely you know that one.”

“Hey, George, I think you’re getting a bit worked up,” said Lou. “Just ignore him.”

“Oh, no, he’s not getting ignored. Not at all. There’s our exit.”

Lou gave him the
I knew that
look that George had seen a hundred times. George cracked his knuckles. He encountered a lot of scumbags in his line of work, but there was something about Ivan that he truly disliked. He wasn’t going to hurt him, or even touch him, but the werewolf was going to lose the attitude, no question about it.

This town seemed quite a bit larger than the last one, although there still wasn’t much there. Every other establishment on Main Street seemed to be an antique shop. George hated antique shops.

“Find us someplace isolated,” George said. Lou gave him another
I knew that
look.

It took about a mile and a couple of turns to find a dirt road with a misspelled sign in green spray paint that said “
No Tresspassing
.” Lou turned onto the road, and after rounding a corner there was more than enough tree cover to keep any witnesses from seeing what they were doing from the paved road.

Lou parked and shut off the engine.

“You ready to talk?” George asked.

Ivan smiled and gave him a thumbs-up sign, though now his smile seemed kind of forced.

“Please don’t cause us any trouble,” George told Michele.

“Please don’t damage our investment,” she said.

George grinned and got out of the van.

* * *

Michele’s day had started with a pregnancy scare. She’d thought it would improve from there.

The stick had not turned blue, thank God. The non-father, Aaron, was the only guy to whom she’d ever provided pity sex. He’d been
so
distressed when his girlfriend broke up with him, and his prospects of landing another girl in a timely manner were bleak, and Michele wasn’t exactly getting it on a regular basis, so she’d slept with him.

The “during” part had been pretty good, despite the fact that he kept singing during sex, but when she woke up in the morning Michele really wished she’d gone with the original plan of spending her evening with some microwave popcorn and a DVD. She’d carefully extricated herself from their spooning and hid in the bathroom for an hour, trying to will herself not to take the cowardly way out and sneak out of the apartment before Aaron woke up.